The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-02-25


| earth or off the earth, and never so much
charity of heart and helping of hand to
those men and classes and races who seem
the farthest down among their brothers.
Power to become sons of God, what
grander text than that one out of Johns
mystic explanation of the Divine light that
has transformed the world from chaos 10
order, and men from brutishness to glory.
Power to become sons of God, 1t is the
| great cry ringing through all the earnest
| struggles upward of the oppressed, and the
| great inspiration which nerves every man
| to do his utmost by and for and with a
| poorer friend. We see as we are. Do men
/ appeal to us in this way as sons Of God, or
| beings it'll power in them to become such?
| Are the streets full Of souls to Us, or only
| bodies more or less clean, more or less
| agreeable, more or less iashionably clothed?
A look Of scorn in my eyes, feeling of in
! difference or contempt in my heart, at any
! ignorance or shame l might see in shanty
or street car would convict me to myself
Of being something Ike what | thought
saw. If were the son of God, | should
| see the sonship in all others, even in the
bomb throwers, against whom our leading
papers are SO boody-minded nowadays.
How is it with the children and the sick
and the feeber-lninded in our homes?
What do we see in them? The slowness
and the bother and the ill-temper and the
weak will? If that be all, then alas for us.
| We see what we are, and he who sees no
more reveals how little more there is with
| in himself. The best man thinks the best
of others Perhaps the secret of Jesus
power 18th the common people was that
OF many another of their best teachers
he saw more in them than less pure eyes
saw. If one uses the name God, then, be-
cause he stands for best Of all, none thinks
50 much OF you as God. 1t must be So
/ and is not that encouraging?
/ Christ sees white in Judas heart.
And loves his traitor we'll;
The God, TO angel his new heaven,
| Explores his lowest HE'LL
Through the degradation and the iguor-
ance and the sin the pure eye pierces to the
live soul deep within the sIumbering embryo
in which humanity and civilization ard
eternal life lie folded up. And if ever We
| feel despoLdeut at the long delays of his
tory and the seeming worm likeness Of hn-
man life, the trouble may be that we are
seeing too much as we are, ourselves, and
we had better murmur to ourselves Long
fellow thought, and with humility, per-
haps, regain our patience:-
what if Gods great angel whose waiting
love
Beholdeth my pitifu life below
| From the holy heights oftheirheayen above,
Couldn't bear with this worm till its wings
do grow
III. IN RELIGION. IDEAS or CON.
One more look We passed from out
door nature to man; now pass from man
and look still higher,-up to the thought
just named, the thought of God, for Illus
trations of our law. We see in Him what
we are in ourselves. We call ourselves
finite, Him infinite; but that which we
think of as infinite for Him is what exists
as finite in ourselves. The difference to
our minds is of degree rather than kind.
| At any given time, the God whom the ma
ton worships is the reflex of its own high
est conception of power and morality and
intelligence. AS man grows wiser and
better, our image in the heavens takes on
beauty.
1t is so with much less important things
than morality and intelligence. Very long
ago it was noticed that the Ethiopian gave
his God a black face and woody hair, while
the Thracian gave his own blue eyes
and fair complexion. In our christian art
| the Virgin face betrays the nationality of
the painter. Murilio makes her Spanish
peasant-girl Raphael an Italian woman
| with some Roman ruins in the background.
The German artists made their angels
| round-faced fraus Two or three hundred
years ago a Dutchman wrote book to
prove that Dutch was the laugh age of
Paradise But the old Epicureans thought
that the gods probably spoke Greek; and
Brigham Young said that English is
Gods language; and Swedenborg, withe
laid a little closer to the truth, reveals that
bilG dih tA1 oSIli W bO s@lNi1AS ShN
tongue to which each listener was born.
And thus it is throughout religion. Our
heaven hope is the dream of joy We have
on earth. The hell torment is the agony
man fears worst on earth. If our idea of
creation is mainly that of manufacture,
then God is the great machinist making
and repairing His worlds and anything but
that will seem little like atheism. Ii
our idea of providence be still that which
the ancient Jews held and very naturally
held, then God is the arbitrary elector and
preordainer of mans and nations desti-
ny; and il one deny special providence and
answers to petitions, he will seem to be
man with no righteousness. If our idea of
divine goodness and of justice be still that
Of Augustine age then we can believe in
the literal dogmas of transmitted guilt aud
transmitted Precipitation and the fearful fate
of unbelievers. God is the great merchant,
then, bartering mans salvation for so much
suffering paid over by another. Let one
doubt the moral possibility ofsueh trans
action and we still have dear friends to tell
us, .sYou do not feel the enormity of sin
/ This instantaneous creator, this special